A Treatise on Sacrificing Weapons

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Since I’m the type to grind so hard I need eye protection, this latest update is actually the first opportunity I’ve had to explore the mastery system (I was of the lucky few who go 100% mastery in all weapons day one of the Unlock and Load update).

And I have got to say, there’s something odd design-wise about Sacrificing Weapons.

I mean, back in ye olde’ days, when all you’d get from selling your stock of weapons was some ordos, this system would seem ideal. Finally, have a reason to clear out the ol’ inventory.

But this is no longer the case, you get materials for recycling your weapons. So I thought, “Well, then perhaps this is asking you to make a choice” - Materials or Mastery.

Except that’s not how it plays out in practice. In practice, I convert my dockets into weapons, my materials into consecration levels for said weapons, and then then convert the weapons into mastery.

And as I attended to this tedium, I asked “Why? Why!?”

Why not just let me upgrade mastery directly with Ordos and mats? Why go through this extra rig-a-ma-role? I had hoped to see the last of this kind of questionable design when you got rid of Hadron’s perk reroll ride and yet here it is again! It got so monotonous, in fact, that I opted to simply play with subpar weapons than waste my time with this process.

What is the point of Sacrificing Weapons if not to provide endgame users a fast-pass to mastery? Am I simply missing something here? Well, lets say I am. Lets say the Sacrifice Weapons mechanic is a gift from the Emperor themselves, and I’m simply an ill-minded heretic. After all, perhaps this is really useful for mid-tier players, who have good weapons, but no materials, so they dump whatever weapons they can get their hands on into mastery.

Why not also have a way to dump materials straight into mastery? Call it “Smelt Materials”. You get a button, and the longer you hold it down, the more materials you lose and the more mastery you gain and you get to see a bar fill up ( and maybe a nice animation of pouring molten goo onto your weapon family of choice). This way I, whomst is drowning in materials, can sink 'em quick and get a new weapon to full mastery in just a few seconds. You could map it 1-to-1 with the materials lost through buy-consencrate-sacrifice, but I’d even be fine paying a premium for the convenience.

And as an added benefit, I can keep a clean inventory and not have to horde weapons for sacrifice.

I know ya’ll care about metrics like “Engagement” and “Retention”, but time spent faffing about in menus is not quality time spent in game. You may as well add an idle fishing minigame, if your goal is to maximize your players time not spent playing Darktide.

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AFAICT the sacrifice system was meant to speed progression for the folks who were holding on to a massive inventory and/or to give you something to do with Emperor’s Gifts you didn’t want to use.

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Aye, but now that you can convert spare weapons to materials in bulk there’s now a redundant solution to that problem.

Right now, the only benefit to saving weapons for sacrifice is it saves you a fraction of time spent buying-consecrating-sacrificing (If you are replete with materials). And saving weapons is a bit tarnished when you get less for sacrificing weapons of different families.

The most efficient means of gaining mastery shouldn’t be tedious, this is indicative of a flaw in the system. Perhaps FS would rather us grind in-game to lvl our weapons, but that would still leave the problem of people having massive mat stockpiles.

My proposed solution fixes both of these problems in a tidy fashion.

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tl;dr
you only had to make ~30 green weapons(favorite the ones with perfect stat distribution) and sacrifice them to get them to ~19.

So you click brunt’s 60 times(one click to buy, one click to get out of the stat window).

Really not that hard, you should be swimming in worthless weapons(discard them in bulk) and have decent amount(near but lower than 5k or so per weapon) plasteel.

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The difficulty is not the issue. It’s the tedium of buying and consecrating 30 weapons.

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Which isn’t that many.
You don’t need to do everything at same time; you can do each weapon as you use them. (or don’t use them)

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I get bored after consecrating 5 greys. Perhaps we just value our time differently. Either way, the system is inefficient.

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Personally I’m leaning toward not encouraging fatshark to “fix” something that isn’t horribly broken.

The system at least works, would you prefer fatshark eat your plasteel for lunch?

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Perhaps, but I feel the folks working on what would largely be a UI project are not the same folks putting out fires elsewhere.

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It’s not just UI issue; I suspect they’re going to encounter more load at backend if you try to buy/roll too many things too quickly.

Stuff already starts breaking when you use the mod that lets you access shops…etc. from Operator Selection menu. (when you change your weapon and load into training room, it often doesn’t immediately change your loadout correctly, for example)

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I don’t follow, my proposed solution does not involve any buying or rolling.

You select a weapon family. You then press a button to convert your materials into mastery. It would be no more intensive than the current “Empower” function.

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That means don’t fiddle with stuff that doesn’t need to be touched.

Your idea also makes the garbage weapon “rewarded” at end of mission even more useless.

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I believe any change that results in me spending less time at Hadron’s and more time in game is a change that’s worth making.

And the EG is already useless for me. As I stated in my treatise, you can still have the old sacrifice weapons button, this would be a third button situated under that. I fail to see how this would impact its worth at all.

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you’re expecting fatshark to implement new feature without breaking the old one, but share resources…etc. with the old one.

That’s not a good sign.
See how partyfinder did not replace quickplay, even fatshark knows to not screw with what already works.

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Sacrifice Weapon uses weapons as a resource. Smelt Materials would use materials. And as far as sharing Mastery, they already have a system that does that, you gain mastery from completing missions. An extra way to gain mastery would be no more destructive than the numerous ways we have to obtain materials.

And if we’re hypothesizing what FS knows, if what you said was true, they wouldn’t have made party finder in the first place. Party Finder was specifically made to address problems people had with quickplay, and to make finding people to play with more efficient than going to the LFG channels on Discord.

If you’re trying to tell me not to point out problems and provide possible solutions just because Fatshark “Might Get it Wrong”, then what’s the point in updating Darktide at all? FS could add a new map and STILL find a way to break the game, it’s inevitable, so the contents therein are irrelevant.

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You make grey into green to sacrifice for the easiest way to do it.

People literally aren’t using partyfinder on release because it’s not tied to quickplay…

Actually adding content is a little different from adding a useless feature. The way to make game better is to add more of the former than latter.

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I’m not going to argue the efficacy of Party Finder, that’s not what this threads about. And we already covered that I find the process of buying and converting greys to be tedious and boring.

And there’s many factors that determine what makes a game “better”, new content is one factor, but so is the addition of Quality of Life features.

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Except your idea is not even in actual gameplay.

It’s a solution looking for problem.

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The problem, is I find the most efficient way to gain mastery to be tedious and boring.

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You only had to do that for 2-3 minutes tops for each weapon.

One run of not total baby mode auric maelstrom can take 40-50minutes.

Out of hundreds/thousands of hours you are expected to spend in game(I’m a casual player at around 1k; didn’t play much because fatshark jank is too horrible), the amount of time spending on sacrificing weapons is an infinitesimally small percentage.